


It's Okay, I'm a Saint

by NicoleAnell



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen, ToT: Chocolate Box, ToT: Monster Mash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-24 13:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8373163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicoleAnell/pseuds/NicoleAnell
Summary: A trick or treat exchange gift for Sheeana. Set in 1x10.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheeana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/gifts).



His hands aren't shaking anymore, which is good. His body feels not so much on _fire_ , but not as cold either, which means the Grounders screwed up and didn't give him enough of what they gave him. They didn't kill him back at their camp, he gets that was on purpose, but that he's still not dead _now_ is an accident. It means he's stronger than Derek (good) and whoever else dies from it. He's a survivor. He doesn't want to change his shirt and everyone's too sick to ask now.

His head was a little fuzzy then but he remembers Bellamy yelling (shock) and accusing him of bringing it on purpose, his revenge or whatever, and that word felt warm and seeing Bellamy in an angry panic spiral felt warm, but if he wanted to kill everybody he wouldn't be doing it with a fucking cold, _Bell_ , he'd be down in Plan D of revenges before deciding on something that was gonna kill him too. But he didn't say any of that, because he was bleeding through his nose and shaking a lot, and Clarke kept telling him to breathe.

 _you want to see vicious?_ (try me try me try-)

And anyway watching everyone bleed and drop and knowing it's what the Grounders wanted, he kept thinking it's not enough. It's not suffering enough or _personal_ enough or something. It's not how he'd do it. And then he kept thinking, everyone died last time he got sick too.

Breathe.

When he's walking again, Octavia says the virus is already out of his system. It was never in hers at all, and that is... lucky for her, or something. He's gotten through vague conversations that she's boning one of them, which is absolutely something she would do, and he wishes more than anything he was around when Bellamy found out about _that._ And now that his hands aren't shaking and he can think in straight lines again, that's when he knows how he's gonna do it. But there's stuff he needs first, and a lot of things happening at once, and before he really knows what he's doing he's playing nurse with a bunch of scared, vomiting kids who cringe when they see his face. (Fear or pity, it depends. It's not like they're doing any better than him.)

He doesn't want to change his shirt, because that's-- stupid, but he wants it, he wore it all those days in the woods and then they took a knife to it, shredded it to pieces but it still hung against his skin, sticking every place he hurt like a bandaid, and it reminded him he was a person and stopped him from tearing his throat on a jagged edge of wood on the side of the cage. He doesn't want to change it, and nobody pushes it. The worst Clarke says is, "When this is over, I'm gonna find some bandages. I'm not letting this get infected."

He said, "Everyone's gonna get infected." Clarke had blood streaks down her face and told him to shut up, then looked mad at herself for it, but she didn't say anything else.

 

* * *

 

 

"Murphy?"

He's resting but not alseep. His eyes flicker open, and she flinches -- she's not used to it, those deep horror-movie wounds on his face, purple-black around his eyes. There are movies she remembers, stuff that survived from the Earth before. Clarke knows the word _undead_ and he is that, on every level. It's a blessing, and a blight, and an inconvenience all at once.

"What happened?" His voice is less hoarse than she expects, tired, calm. "What do you need?"

"Nothing, just..." she's already lying. Start over. "I need to finish, from earlier? See if _you_ need anything."

"I'm not Jasper," he says. "I'm not gonna be dying all week. I'm good."

She is already reaching a cloth into the alcohol bucket. She makes the words sound as gentle as she can. "And we're gonna ask you some questions." He tenses, eyes dart vaguely to his surroundings, to a chance to make an exit. Bellamy's not there (Finn's there). He looks back at her easy, unafraid. He didn't want to her to see that.

"I didn't know what they were gonna do," he says quietly, firm. "I don't know anything."

"I believe that," she says. It's the truth, mostly. Any doubts she has are buried under a thick layer of guilt. "Tell you what," she says, her pitch rising suddenly, a forced smile like she's talking to a six-year-old. "We can talk about it first, or I can look at your hands and your shoulder. Not at the same time."

She knows it still sounds like a trap, or a threat, or the kind of choice that's not a choice. He already knows it's going to hurt, all reopening and cleaning and tying up wounds. And still he nods toward the bucket. "That first, talk later."

"But if there's anything important, you'd-"

"There's _nothing,_ " he says, a glimmer of something fierce and desperate that makes her heart ache.

Finn grimaces helplessly behind her and says, "You know you're not being punished, right?" and Murphy smirks a little, something darkly funny in his head.

When she touches the rope burns on his arm, he sucks in a hard, tight breath and shuts his eyes a moment and then opens them again, staring off in unfocused anger. Four fingers. They never got to his pinkie, or his other hand. "Which one was first?" she asks.

His thumb twitches involuntarily. "Why?"

 _Because I don't want to start with that one too. Because this will hurt again, not as much but a lot, and the less you think about that the better._ She sighs, "I just want to know, Murphy. I know you remember."

Hard eyes, he says, "You said no questions yet." And that's fair. She's not great at this. But he swallows tiredly and gestures with his hand. This one. Like he doesn't have the energy for defiance, or he's exerting _too much_ being careful, being good.

His hand contracts when the alcohol touches, unconsciously squeezes hers and she fights her instinct to pull away.

"I need to hold it for a minute," she says.

"Yeah," he says through his teeth, and doesn't fight it.

"If you want, I can- you can bite down on something." Does not say _gag you._

Another ghost of a smile on his lips. She hates it. "If I want," he echoes.

He flinches less the second time, breathes through it. When she gets to the top of his arm, flayed and burned in an imperfect circle, he makes a low, humming noise, kicks his leg out and straightens it like a board, buries his face into his other shoulder like he means to disappear. "You're all right," she says. Blessing, blight, inconvenience.

"I like this better on the other side of it," he says after a while.

"What?"

He shrugs. Does not say _hurting people,_ does not say _torture_. "Medicine stuff." Her smile is unforced that time.

"You did good today."

It hangs in the air for less than a second before he says, "Don't let Bellamy kill me."

She leans away instinctively. He's looking at her, steady. "Hey," she hears herself say, the Reassuring Parent back in her voice. "He's just talking." She thinks of Atom, thinks, _if we wanted to kill you, I'm the one you need to worry about_ and the thought makes her shiver.

He swallows and she could swear, for a moment, he's trying to look smaller, imitating softness. "I'm sorry," he says, and the words sound _hollow_ and rehearsed and resigned. "About Charlotte and everything. If we're all gonna die here anyway, I want-"

She cuts him off, parent-voice gone. "We don't need to talk about that right now." Presses the rag back to his shoulder.

 

* * *

 

There's blood pooling in the washbin. It seems like too much. He can pretend it spilled. He should spill it. They won't notice more blood on the floor. (It's fine, it's fine.) He tried to make it wash away but he used the wrong hand and the alcohol hit his nail beds, again, but he's a survivor and feels warm and doesn't scream.

He goes over words in his mind. _Can I stay here. Let me stay here. I'll die if you send me back out there. Let me stay here, Clarke. I'll die, let me_

His face feels weird. He lies back down on the floor and waits for sunlight - the _idea_ of sunlight, not the kind he can see. He'd forgotten what the ceiling of the dropship looked like. He doesn't feel anything about it, he just remembers now.

 _Don't let Bellamy kill me_ , he said that already. He could say it again. _Please-_ He rolls over and grinds his teeth. Too much, never worked before.

He ends up not saying any of it, because the first thing Clarke says to him the next morning is, "Change your shirt. You're catching fish." Which doesn't _mean_ anything, and he touches the fabric defensively. He didn't practice for this.

He looks at Finn, who's hovering behind her again, and asks "Am I being punished _now?"_ which does not make either of them laugh. "I got this," he hears her whisper to him, not unkindly. "You should go back to Raven." He shifts uncomfortably, so _that's_  apparently something. "They need more guns out there," he says, and he's gone and Bellamy's gone and it's just her.

She sits next to him. "You feel better?" If he says no they can't make him go anywhere or accuse him of anything, but if he says yes he's _useful,_ and he doesn't--

Breathe. He thinks about the panic and breath draining from someone, being on the other side of that, and says honestly, "Yeah. Starting to."

"Good," she says. He rocks on his hands. It hurts but he's in charge of it. "Do you know how long you were there?"

"Yeah," he says. She waits. "Three days. I could see the light." She's looking sad at him, which is _good_ but he doesn't like it. "If we do this, can I ask you questions too?"

"Of course," she says. "Sure, Murphy."

"What happened while I was gone?"

She almost laughs. "Where do you want me to _start?"_

"Who else is dead?" he says immediately, and it stops her levity in its tracks, as casually as he says it.

"We lost Connor last night." He keeps his face even, or a little surprised maybe. "His immune system just... some people have it worse. We can't get too relaxed until everyone's out of the fever."

"Not that you ever do that, right?" he offers her a smile, careful, and she returns it. "I was checking on him," he adds. "I must've fallen asleep."

"It's not your fault," she says quickly, and he nods. "I didn't mean to- It's been a long night for everybody."

"I checked on him," he repeats again quieter, sounding it out.

"Mbege died a little after you- did you know about that?" and something goes still in him, because he didn't, he didn't think of him at all, not since-- under the knives he would think about people coming to save him, and when that didn't work he thought about hurting everyone, saving himself and hurting everyone and that worked better. He killed Mbege a lot, for leaving him. That worked.

"I thought maybe he was just scared to come talk to me," he says. Rocks himself forward again. "How?"

"Grounders," she says dumbly. "It was... it happened fast. He probably didn't even see them." Like she hopes that's a comfort. Maybe it is. If it wasn't fast they could've been cellmates again. He could've helped him, or killed him, or something. "I'm sorry," she says.

He shrugs his shoulders. "Fuck it." It was almost _fuck him,_ but he held it back. There's nothing behind it. He's a survivor, he'll be here when everyone else isn't. ( _Not everyone. Not alone. Clarke can stay._ Breathe.) Clarke has pity-eyes again, so just for emphasis he says, "I'm gonna die if you leave me out there, you know."

"We're not doing that," she says, so easily it's not even worth anything. It still feels like a trick, conditional.

"Bellamy-" he says, and she interrupts.

"I talked to him. Just hang back for now, all right? Change your shirt, go catch some fish. Don't be..." she trails off, then says it. "Don't be you."

"Thanks," he mutters.

She looks hesitant for a minute. "I'm sorry for..." she starts, which is _new,_ but the next thing she says is, "You know why we banished you, right?" And that feels like a loaded question no matter what he says, so he forces a nod and hopes she's almost done with the questions. She stares into the wall, voice wavering. "I just remember thinking, if it wasn't Wells it would've been Jasper, if it wasn't Jasper it would've been Charlotte. You would've done it to someone." She shakes her head. "I told myself that. Or someone would've killed you." (And it's hilarious, her saying _someone_ and not Bellamy, but okay.) "I didn't want that either. I didn't know how to make it stop..."

He opens his mouth, almost says, _You wanted me to die slow in the woods instead._ But remembers _don't be you,_ whoever that is, and decides to be Clarke instead. "We don't have to talk about that," he says in a voice like hers, and he sees her face flush with relief, and he hates her again, just like that. "It's done, bygones."

She wipes under her eyes, half-laughs. "God, I'm tired." He's easing into the fishing idea, at least half of it. They might give him a knife. (Grounders took his other one, pulled up his sleeve, made a shallow, spider cut on his arm--)

"Don't make me change my shirt," he says suddenly. He _really_ hadn't practiced for that, and it's the most pathetic thing that's come out of his mouth in a long time, which is saying a lot when you include the begging. His hands are shaking again. He's not sick anymore.

Clarke's looking at him strangely. "We don't have a lot of extra clothes. I just thought I could ask someone. You don't have to." (Breathe.) She sizes something up in him, adds casually, "I just thought you wouldn't want people to stare. And you don't want to be cold." Like they won't stare anyway, and like she cares now.

"You have an extra jacket?" he says finally.

She pauses, as if figuring out how to say this. "Connor had a jacket."

Flash of light in his eyes. He suppresses it fast. Careful. Trap.

"We have this whole divide-based-on-need..." she's saying, a lilt of some buried sense of humor underneath something way more earnest. Not a trap. Just fucking _Clarke._

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I'll take his." His hands aren't shaking. He's good.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (SURPRISE, I couldn't leave that where it ended, so consider this the more treat-y addition. It's a trick AND treat.)
> 
> Set after 3x07.

He gets tired of banging on the door eventually. He gets tired of everything, and wants to lie down on something soft, but Clarke wasn't happy about him napping on the Commander's bed. She doesn't seem to be happy with anything he's doing. He curls up and closes his eyes anyway. She takes a turn at the door, like he wasn't just trying that, but he doesn't like being closed-in either, so it's good to hear.

("Hey, wake up," he told her, glassy-eyed, standing in the corner with her eyes open and brain spinning somewhere else. "I get it, listen, but we need to- we need to get out of here."

"I know," she said, moving slowly. Undead.

"I don't want to wait for him to come back." He was talking fast. "But we could hit him with something, if he does. Guy has crazy reflexes but there's two of us now. Look at me." He snapped his fingers, gestured between them. "There's two of us," he said. "Don't go anywhere." And she didn't. Where was she going? She got it.)

He wakes ten minutes later with a start, clutching the jacket Titus put back on him. She's at the window, trying to get it open. "How long was I asleep for?" He's expecting her to still have her watch, but she doesn't. The sun's still out.

"I don't know," she says, distracted. "A few minutes."

"We're like 80 floors up, Clarke. You gonna jump?" She doesn't answer. "Hey," he says. "Don't jump."

She gives him a look, the clearest-eyed she's been since the gun went off, and of course she isn't, he (mostly) knew that. "Someone could see us," she says.

"They might also try to kill us," he finishes. "You want the bed?" and she looks at him like she's keeping herself together with the thinnest thread on the planet. "Sorry," he says. "Right."

"What's wrong with you?" she says. He goes over words in his head, _it was my gun it was my gun_ and he can't make them sound like anything he wants to say.

"Head trauma probably? They're not really big on polite conversation around here." She softens, a little. Comes halfway over to him, but stops herself.

"You look all right," she says quietly, and thank god, he doesn't think he could handle her looking over scars or anything right now.

"Not that I wanted to give them ideas or anything, but I've been through worse. Mostly he just hit me."

"Why?"

"I got arrested? Like a normal person. Your story's probably better." Someone put crazy braids in her hair, for one thing. "He wanted stuff about you, you know. How you are."

"What did you tell him?" _How am I?_

"I don't know," he says. "What I always do, anything. I haven't seen you in four months. I told him the stuff before that." She nods, goes back to the window, doesn't ask anything else. (Doesn't want to know.)

"I thought..." he swallows and keeps talking, just because there's someone there to talk to. "I thought maybe you knew, where I was. Just the first day, when he kept talking about you. It sounded like you had power or something." (Thought about saving himself and hurting people, hurting Clarke, and that didn't work. He thought about Emori and it worked.) "But I didn't think you'd keep it going that long."

"I wouldn't," she says quietly, making herself believe it. "Of course I wouldn't."

"He called you something." He doesn't want to try to pronounce it. He doesn't have to.

"Wanheda," she says. "Commander of Death. That's what it means."

"I miss a lot?"

She shoves her hand into the door suddenly, a deliberate, hard angle straight at the handle. It does nothing but it's an effort. _This first. Talk later._

 

* * *

There's water and food in the tower, and it's not being fed to him by the same person who whipped him with a bundle of dead wires between prayers, so that's a _step up_ anyway. When he reaches for a handful of grapes, Clarke gives him a wounded look, like he'd stuck a knife in her, like she wants to slap his hand away from anything the dead girl had touched. He feels bad. He shouldn't feel bad but he does. "Can I have these-?" he says too late, two of them already in his mouth. And she forces a nod at him, calming herself already, greater good and all that.

"Yeah," she mumbles. "Have it all, I'm not- I'm not hungry."

"I get it," he says. Uselessly, he adds, "I am. Sorry."

She surveys him afterwards, the first time since he woke up to her hands on his face, before all the distracting shit happened. _What did you do to my friend?_ She was always nice to him once the damage was already done. She was always guilty about him. He remembers she was one of the first that got sick, the only one to catch it from him who wasn't just _unlucky_ , because she wouldn't stop touching him. He was shaking and bleeding and she was trying to disinfect everything, and he remembered her mom was a doctor, that she was always trying to be that too.

"What'd you get arrested for?" she says.

"Here or back home?" He hears how dumb that sounds as soon as he says it. The question and the _home_ part. Head trauma.

" _Here._ Why are you here?"

"I met a girl. Jaha went crazy. We left and... we were just out, surviving. We robbed some people."

"You met a girl?" She smiles a little sadly, like of _course_ that is the wildest part of this story, he hears it too. And he wants to mention Clarke's girl and Clarke's braids, but he doesn't want to see her face crumple again.

"Her name's Emori. She speaks English. And she... we got caught, but she's still out there, she got out." He feels warm. "I wanted her to run. She wasn't going to." (He remembers a sword to his neck and he was unafraid, because she was there and he didn't want her to do something stupid and he didn't want her to see him die like a coward. It would've been okay.) Clarke's face crumples anyway. He tried. "She's funny," he says. "She's not Trikru or any of this. She doesn't have people. She's like me."

She exhales, quiet, half-hearted. "You have people, Murphy."

"What, like you?" Maybe he wants her to hit him. It would pass the time. "Why are  _you_  here?"

"I thought about you." Not an answer, and he notices that. "I worried."

"The time you got me hanged or after?"

"Yes, that time," she says instantly, unmoved. The time when leaving wasn't his fault. "Was that the part you told him - Titus?" and he fidgets because yeah, that was the _dumbest_ thing he told him, because whenever he wanted to shut him up after that--

"Murphy?" He's nodding, makes a yes noise. Breathe. He pulls it together, listens to her. There's someone there to listen to.

Her voice goes farther away. "I thought about you," she says again. "I'd never seen anyone that scared before," and he doesn't like that. A lot of people are scared when they're dying. Bellamy was scared. Their dads, probably. He knows better than to _say_ that, though, so he rubs at the marks on his wrist, which hurts but he's in charge of it. "It seemed like a lot, back then. It was a lot. I had dreams about it."

He thinks, _Don't be you,_ and yet he rolls his eyes before he can help it. "That was a hard time for you, huh?" She doesn't say anything, looks exhausted. He feels bad. He shouldn't feel bad. _There's two of us now._ "Sorry," he says for the third time, automatic and less-him.

* * *

 

They're still in there when the sun goes down, and he sees that's freaking her out a little, making her _tense,_ so he tells her about the bunker. And the happy pills, and the City of Light, though she's only half following any of it. (Like she says, "Did you take it?" to him, barely standing as he is, and he laughs. "No pain," he says again. "It's not a metaphor. Does it look like I fucking did?")

"Lexa could feel..." she says and stops, sorting this out. It's the first time she said her name, since they were alone.

He says, "No offense to..." and he knows immediately that she doesn't want him to say her name, like she didn't want him touching her things. "I don't think that was the same thing."

"I have no idea what that was," she says in a shaky voice, and _then_ he has to tell her about the paintings and the first _natblida_ and all that, because what has she even been doing here? She's listening, and also shutting her eyes to concentrate, and he touches her back without thinking and she doesn't move.

He says, "If we get out of here, what's the plan?" She is nothing if not full of those, or when all else fails pretending to be.

"We go back to Camp J--" she stops, corrects herself. "It's Arkadia now."

"See? You know more than I do." Also: "Good." Because screw him, it feels nice that they _all_ liked him better when they thought he was dead.

"I have to do something first, though." He still has his hand on her back and doesn't really know when he's supposed to move it. He starts making a circle with his hand, which is wrong, makes her look at him. He stops. He hasn't touched a sad person who wasn't Emori.

"We didn't kill anybody," he says out of nowhere, more defensive-sounding than he intended, because what does he care what she thinks? "Emori. There was one- but he took the chip, that was complicated." A pause and he adds, "We hurt some people. That's it."

"All right," she says, apathetic. He's missed a lot.

"Back then you said you thought I was gonna kill someone eventually. I'm not like that all the time."

"Well," she says. "I mean. You _did._ " But there's nothing behind it. Commander of Death.

"I went with Jaha because I thought maybe there was a reason why..." thinks _why I'm still here_ , thinks _why I didn't die in the tree or the desert or a skinny kid with a fever_ but he doesn't want to finish the sentence. "I didn't really believe that. But he said this thing to me... when you only see yourself one way, that's all anyone else sees. And I felt like, I didn't like being that to everybody. So I went somewhere else."

"I killed everyone at Mount Weather," she says suddenly. She's watching his eyes. He doesn't blink.

"I know that," he says. He wasn't talking about her, but he gets it. "The guy- Titus said that too." He's allowed to say his name.

She lowers her eyes. She doesn't say anything else. For some reason he thinks, _You know you're not being punished, right?_ but he doesn't know if she believes that. (He didn't believe that, but at the same time he never got why suffering is supposed to be such a comfort if it's _random_ and unearned.)

"This won't make you feel better, but I probably would've done it too."

"You're right, that does not make me feel better," she says stiffly. Sense of humor buried under something more hurt.

 _Don't be you._ "You're more than the worst thing you've done," he says, as sincere as he can manage. "You're more than the worst thing that happened to you. I liked hearing that." Her hand contracts around his, a reflex.

After a minute she goes, "I don't want to hear anything else Jaha said." And _obviously_ , he doesn't either, he's just low on things people say to each other.

"But you believe that kind of crap, right?"

"Yes," she says without hesitating. "But we're those things, too."


End file.
